video feed?

[jason]

I posted this in the "audio links" thread responding to a post by Chris '02, but that thread may not be of interest to many of you so this tidbit may have gone overlooked, so I'm pasting it here (and "EVERY" may not be totally accurate, but most every is):

Whoa! Things at i2sports are even more interesting than Colgate vs Cornell. EVERY Cornell home game is shown on their calendar and Cornell is listed as a "client" of theirs. The implication is that Cornell home games will have video feeds. Seems too good to be true, but for the time being I've added their info to the the audiolinks page (http://www.frontiernet.net/~letsgored/audiolinks.html)



Post Edited (10-20-03 17:57)

[Adam]

Does it cost anything?

[CowbellGuy]

Yeah, you heard me.

First of all, every time you load one of their pages on a Mac (and not using Netscape, incidentally), you get greeted by 2 separate JavaScript popups:
[q]You seem to be using Netscape. i2sports content is best viewed with Internet Explorer. Some pages may not load properly.[/q]
[q]You seem to be using a Mac or a Maytag. i2sports content is best viewed with a real PC.[/q]
Screw them. They can kiss my ass.

Their video page also has a link for "MAC, Netscape, or otherwise PC-challenged:" viewers, which doesn't work anyway. What a bunch of unprofessional assholes.

[Will]

Well, the first popup could be somewhat valid, depending on the version of Netscape used.  (Although, the programmers of the site should know enough to know how to detect which specific version of Netscape is being used.)  Though, the second popup does seem...undiplomatic, at best.

[CowbellGuy]

I wasn't using Netscape.

[jason]

Agreed, rather unprofessional for a business enterprise. The question remains though: are they going to be offering streaming video of Cornell's home games? If they were involved with the broadcast of last year's Cornell@Colgate game this could be very good; my recollection was that the image quality of that game's video was quite high (the announcing on the other hand...). In an effort to get an answer, I sent an email to the person given as the contact at i2sports. I'll report what (if anything) I hear.

[ugarte]

Jason N '95 wrote:

Agreed, rather unprofessional for a business enterprise.

Consider me an agnostic, because I know nothing about the relative merits of Macs vs. PCs.  But this board is constantly filled with Mac users slagging PCs.   If i2sports doesn't run on Macs, that is bad, but if they do support Mac use (and Age's problems seem to be because something isn't working right, rather than there being no option) ... can't you people take a joke?



Post Edited (10-21-03 18:41)

[jtwcornell91]

Well, it doesn't run at all on Linux. (At least I'm assuming this; I haven't had a lot of luck trying to get mplayer to play Windoze Media crap.)  But then neither does QuickTime (as I understand it's illegal to support the best codecs on an open source platform), so I'm willing to put up with the company putting out the feed being Micro$oft's bitch if it means we don't get reamed with subscription fees.  Lesser of two evils.

In a better world there would be an open standard for streaming media, and everyone could use whatever player on whatever platform they want.

[DeltaOne81]

[Q]Agreed, rather unprofessional for a business enterprise.[/Q]
Sadly, this seems to be the professional way to go about things these days. Big corporations tend to chose one technology and one platform to support and that's it - cheap ones do it too.

[Q]can't you people take a joke?[/Q]
There's a difference between a joke and "you can't view Cornell hockey cause we're too lazy to support your choice of computer." We don't know if that's the case, of course, but if it is, it's hardly a 'joke.'

Of course, I have VPC, but I doubt it'll show well in emulation.

[DisplacedCornellian]

way too whine about a free service....

"You mean you're giving me something for free, but you won't cater to my specific needs?!  INCONSIDERATE BASTARDS!"

Damn whining minority mac owners....

[DeltaOne81]

First of all, we don't know it's free (the site DOES have premium, log-in required content - I found some). Second of all, if it's doesn't work on my computer, they're not giving me anything, are they?

If it's free, and I just have to put up with an alternate link and a couple pop-up messages, I won't be complaining. Even if it's a moderate fee I won't complain much. We're not talking about picky needs - we're talking about basic functionality.

On the plus side, I found the same link Age did, which was broken. But another program had the alternate link working, and when I downloaded the file, it took 45 seconds to connect, but then streamed fine.

-Fred

[DisplacedCornellian]

DeltaOne81 '03 wrote:

First of all, we don't know it's free (the site DOES have premium, log-in required content - I found some). Second of all, if it's doesn't work on my computer, they're not giving me anything, are they?

If it's free, and I just have to put up with an alternate link and a couple pop-up messages, I won't be complaining. Even if it's a moderate fee I won't complain much. We're not talking about picky needs - we're talking about basic functionality.

On the plus side, I found the same link Age did, which was broken. But another program had the alternate link working, and when I downloaded the file, it took 45 seconds to connect, but then streamed fine.

-Fred

Point taken, and I apologize for the hostile tone of my previous message.  
But still...this site is providing the vast majority of us with a (theoretically) free service that most of us would probably be willing to pay for.  Should they really be chastized just because they don't cater to mac (I'm lumping all non-Window$ users into the category of mac for the sake of simplicity...) users?

Are you going to bitch about your local auto parts store for not having an EGR valve for your '73 Gremlin in stock?  I don't think so.  (It's essentially the same thing...sorry mac users.   You can replace Gremlin with the foreign luxury automobile of your choice if it makes you feel any better  :-P )

[jtwcornell91]

DisplacedCornellian wrote:
Should they really be chastized just because they don't cater to mac (I'm lumping all non-Window$ users into the category of mac for the sake of simplicity...)

Yeah, well there's part of the problem right there.

[Tub(a)]

[q]There's a difference between a joke and "you can't view Cornell hockey cause we're too lazy to support your choice of computer." We don't know if that's the case, of course, but if it is, it's hardly a 'joke.'[/q]

I'm not too familiar with comptability issues, but would it cost them more to make the video compatible with Mac? It would make sense for them to cater to the larger audience if it was a cost issue.

 [q] Are you going to bitch about your local auto parts store for not having an EGR valve for your '73 Gremlin in stock? I don't think so. [/q]

I am, because I own one. No, I'm not kidding :-)

[DisplacedCornellian]

John T. Whelan '91  wrote:

Yeah, well there's part of the problem right there.

I don't follow.  How is grouping non-windows based machines into one group for the sake of simplicity a problem.  

And please spare me any holier-than-thou-microsoft-is-the-devil garbage.

Windows is the dominant OS, thus companies looking to serve the most customers are obviously going to make sure they have windows compatibility before worrying about any of the other operating systems.

Does it suck that windows is the dominant OS?  Maybe.

Should we fault companies with limited resources for making sure they have windows covered before they worry about every other operating system in existence?  no.